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375
The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
133
The
extraordinary
and
how
quickly
it
is
hidden
away.
Burial
and
damnation,
or
the
obscurity
of
the
conspicuous.
We
did
read
of
a
man
who,
in
the
matter
of
snails,
did
travel
some
distance
to
assure
himself
of
something
that
he
had
suspected
in
advance;
and
we
remember
Prof.
Hitchcock,
who
had
only
to
smite
Amherst
with
the
wand
of
his
botanical
knowledge,
and
lo!
two
fungi
sprang
up
before
night;
and
we
did
read
of
Dr.
Gray
and
his
thousands
of
fishes
from
one
pailful
of
water--but
these
instances
stand
out;
more
frequently
there
was
no
"investigation."
We
now
have
a
good
many
reported
occurrences
that
were
"investigated."
Of
things
said
to
have
fallen
from
the
sky,
we
make,
in
the
usual
scientific
way,
two
divisions:
miscellaneous
objects
and
substances,
and
symmetric
objects
attributable
to
beings
like
human
beings,
sub-dividing
into--wedges,
spheres,
and
disks.
Jour.
Roy.
Met.
Soc.,
14-207:
That,
July
2,
1866,
a
correspondent
to
a
London
newspaper
wrote
that
something
had
fallen
from
the
sky,
during
a
thunderstorm
of
June
30,
1866,
at
Netting
Hill.
Mr.
G.T.
Symons,
of
Symons'
Meteorological
Magazine,
investigated,
about
as
fairly,
and
with
about
as
unprejudiced
a
mind,
as
anything
ever
has
been
investigated.
He
says
that
the
object
was
nothing
but
a
lump
of
coal:
that
next
door
to
the
home
of
the
correspondent
coal
had
been
unloaded
the
day
before.
With
the
uncanny
wisdom
of
the
stranger
upon
unfamiliar
ground
that
we
have
noted
before,
Mr.
Symons
saw
that
the
coal
reported
to
have
fallen
from
the
sky,
and
the
coal
unloaded
more
prosaically
the
day
before,
were
identical.
Persons
in
the
neighborhood,
unable
to
make
this
simple
identification,
had
bought
from
the
correspondent
pieces
of
the
object
reported
to
have
fallen
from
the
sky.
As
to
credulity,
I
know
of
no
limits
for
it--but
when
it
comes
to
paying
out
money
for
credulity--oh,
no
standards
to
judge
by,
of
course--just
the
same--
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